"Inheritance"

Original title:

Zhao Li: Walking on the Road of Research on the Restoration of Cave Murals

People's Daily reporter Li Yanan

In the Kizil Grottoes, Zhao Li (see photo) compared the cutting marks on the wall with hundreds of photos in the computer, and found that the subject matter, color, and decorative patterns should be matched one by one. Suddenly, a picture in her mind was precisely inlaid into the missing wall - this "inspiration" stems from her familiarity with each mural in each cave and the traces uncovered. She has traveled in Kizil Grottoes for 32 years. As a research librarian of Kizil Grottoes Research Institute, each cave is deeply engraved in her mind.

Kizil Grottoes is located on the cliff of Mingwutage Mountain, 7 kilometers southeast of Kizil Township, Baicheng County, Aksu Prefecture, Xinjiang. It is the largest group of grottoes in ancient Qiuci, and also the largest group of grottoes that were first excavated and located in the west of China. At the beginning of the 20th century, there were expeditions from Japan, Germany, Russia and other countries who came here to plunder murals, sculptures and other precious cultural relics and transport them overseas.

After working in the Kizil Grottoes Research Institute in 1992, Zhao Li found that the area of the murals uncovered in the Kizil Grottoes was nearly 500 square meters, involving 59 caves.

In 2002, when Zhao Li attended an international academic seminar in Berlin, Germany, she saw the Kucha Grottoes frescoes and other cultural relics lost overseas for the first time at the Asian Art Museum in Berlin (formerly the Indian Art Museum in Berlin). She secretly determined to return here in the future to systematically investigate the murals in Qiuci Grottoes.

After returning home, Zhao Li began to learn German. In 2012, she was given the opportunity to become a visiting scholar at the Asian Art Museum in Berlin. For more than a year, she took photos, measured and recorded 4594 Xinjiang cultural relics, including murals, in the museum's collection, leaving precious first-hand information. "There is no drinking or eating in the cultural relics warehouse. In order to hurry up, I often work from opening to closing."

From 2002 to 2016, Zhao Li also went to several museums collecting murals in Qiuci Grottoes to obtain information, and collected 487 high-definition pictures of murals collected by more than 20 museums in 8 countries.

Compared with investigation and data collection, it is more challenging to restore the murals scattered around the world in Kizil Grottoes to their original locations; Some large murals have been split into small pieces and taken off. After being transported overseas, they are misaligned when reassembling. The murals in different parts of the same cave have been wrongly spliced. The murals in different caves with the same theme have even been widely acclaimed. After researching the original position of the mural, I cut the mural photos in the computer and rearrange them. " Zhao Li said.

The restoration can be completed only when each cave is well known and well prepared. From the beginning of her work, Zhao Li Baitian Cave read Buddhist scriptures in the evening. "Only when she is familiar with relevant Buddhist scriptures can we verify the origin of mural themes, match murals with Buddhist scriptures, and understand the world in murals."

Countless trips have been made to Kizil Grottoes. In the caverns full of holes, Zhao Li faces the wall, splits and assembles the wrong pieces of mural images in the computer, and then resets them. "To check whether the mural patterns match and the size is appropriate, some of them are right. After two days of looking again, they find the wrong parts, so they have to start again."

Until 2020, most of the murals in Kizil Grottoes had found their original positions and had been restored. Zhao Li collected these recovered murals into Research on the Restoration of Kizil Grottoes Frescoes, and published more than 1200 plates, which is the largest research atlas containing the scattered murals of Kizil Grottoes so far. "There are still more than 40 pieces of debris that cannot be located. Maybe the wall of the cave where they are located has collapsed, and the original 'home' will never be found." Zhao Li cannot hide her sadness.

Kizil Grottoes are part of the Qiuci Grottoes. Now, Zhao Li has begun the research on the restoration of the murals in the other two grottoes, Kumutula Grottoes and Senmusem Grottoes. "More than 200 high-definition pictures have been collected," said Zhao Li.